"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

I thought about this quote a lot over the past month, fighting my hard battle. There has been a lot that has been very strange about the past month. I mean, really bizarre. The psychology of the whole thing is really beyond my armchair pop psychology abilities… in others, it’s fascinating, uplifting, disappointing to see who was there, who stepped up and who didn’t and how others reacted. There was this amazing, completely indescribable outpouring from the world. I said something like this at the press conference back in Minnesota, but without the Wailing Wall portion—I remember being at the Wailing Wall and feeling this energy… because whether or not you believe it has its own sacredness, there is so much human energy being focused toward it, it was palpable. I found the same to be true over this month, I felt like I could actually feel the energy and work and support of so many, many people. I was like the mom who lifts a Volvo off her toddler, there was this superpower that was fueled by that energy. Amazing. And lots of other words that are so overused that when something that truly incredible happens… they sound weak.
But in this extreme crisis, I was amazed at how both beautifully wonderful and completely cruel strangers can be. So much, more than I will ever know, of our success is due to friends and strangers reaching out, taking action and making this critical mass work. And I can't be more grateful. But to the woman who yelled at me to "get off the phone!" the day my dad was arrested and I was standing at the side of the gas station talking to a reporter? And the woman who was incredibly rude and put out when my dad's wife knocked over her empty glass while getting into our table at a restaurant after learning hours earlier that my dad would be released and preparing to eat our first meal of the day at 3pm after attending the UN Security Council Meeting? And to the reporter who misquoted me, causing me to called my father’s despicable lawyer daughter in the comments of the article-and every other one to come? And to whoever called me a prostitute in some other comments? And to the man who yelled at the overworked medical resident to move her car after she'd driven over an hour to see her friend who lives across the country and whose father was just released from 3 weeks in Rwandan jail? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? The vitriol was astonishing. You’re calling me and my family monsters and wishing us ill? See, I (the monster or at least spawn of the monster) would never say such cruel things about anyone. I would never delight in a family’s misery and fear and call names. Why? Because I was raised better by that monster. Even just being rude because you're having a bad day... unacceptable, you never know the effect of your unkindness on someone in the middle of their battle. On the flip side, woman at JFK, you'll never know how much it meant when you handed me your unlimited metro card, for no reason. It works both way.
There are so many more examples of the ways people were extraordinary, though, I don’t want to downplay that. I am more sure now than ever that I have amazing friends and I have met many more amazing people. Strangers, who have remained strangers, were amazing. For someone who isn’t good at asking for help, owing so much to people I’ll never meet is… humbling. Humbling is both knowing that people will help you because they know you and they care, and that people will help someone they don’t know because it is the right thing to do. The overwhelming lesson was really 1) people can be beautiful and 2) the internet is assholes.